Category Archives: Writing

The THREAD: March 2023

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I’m not entirely sure who said it (though I strongly suspect it was C S Lewis), but there’s an old saying that goes something like this:

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?

It doesn’t feel like more than a month has gone by since I sat down and wrote the first of these THREAD posts, but here I am again. Only a few weeks ago that I was musing about raising teenagers, reading Jonathan Franzen and reminiscing about our (now far less) recent trip to New Zealand. That holiday feels like an eternity ago, now we are well and truly in the swing of all things school and work.

Since it’s been a busy month, I’ve got a bunch of things buzzing around in my head — so best to let them out.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

This month I have been Thinking about the imminent retirement of Adam Bull from the Australian Ballet. I have genuinely enjoyed watching him dance over the years, and am sorry the blasted pandemic meant I had to put my ballet subscription on hold, meaning I will probably not get to see him take the stage again. I’ve never been a dancer (my body favours sporty stuff rather than the life balletic), but I have come to love and appreciate the athleticism, grace beauty of both classical and contemporary ballet. I will be sad to see Adam Bull’s tall and striking figure leave the company after more than two decades, but am grateful to have seen him perform.

I’ve also been thinking about how various artforms inform and inspire each other, largely because I have just finished reading Maggie O’Farrell’s book The Marriage Portrait. The novel opens with Lucrezia de’ Medici, Duchess of Ferrara realising — on page one, no less — that her husband intends to murder her, and that the portrait he has commissioned of her is being painted in isolated castello precisely because that is where he intends to carry out the fell deed without anyone realising or interfering. Needless to say, I was pretty much hooked from the initial paragraphs and finished the book in a night.

The painting which inspired the novel is generally attributed to Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino, and also served as the stimulus for Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess”. Like O’Farrell’s novel, the poem has an equally memorable opening:

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,/Looking as if she were alive.”

When I first looked at Bronzino’s portrait, I was struck by how modern Lucrezia appears — and how worldly, despite her youth. She did not survive her marriage to the Duke of Ferrara, and died suddenly at the age of 16. Lucrezia’s dress in the painting might be dreadfully outmoded, but her expression is intelligent and her gaze direct. I went down quite the rabbithole trying to figure out who she reminded me of, and stumbled across this comparison, which seemed rather apt:

Fortunately, Anya Taylor-Joy is very much alive, and I suspect she’d do a great job of playing Lucrezia de’ Medici if The Marriage Portrait ever made it to the big screen — much like Scarlett Johansson did in Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was based on Tracy Chevalier’s novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the painting by Johannes Vermeer. Or how Adam Bull played the Prince in Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty, which was based on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault.

Is everything created somehow borrowed, rather than brand new? I’m not sure…but it’s certainly given me a lot to think about.

I finally got around to Hearing this interview Helen Garner gave Annabel Crabb late last year. Recorded to mark the occasion of Garner’s 80th birthday, it is a thought provoking hour of insights into the life of artists generally and writers particularly. I suspect one of the main reasons I enjoyed listening to this so much was that this particular interview was a discussion between two women I admire (and whose general vocabulary I covet). Then again, in my experience it is always pleasurable to listen to intelligent, articulate and opinionated people discuss…things. Anything, really. If they are speaking of something about which you know nothing, you have the opportunity to learn something new. Perhaps more importantly, if they are discussing something with which you are familiar, you may gain a fresh perpsective or better understanding of someone else’s point of view.

In any case, Garner spoke candidly about many things, including the self-doubt which plagues her whenever she is writing something new, the book she believes to be her worst, her views on feminism, the controversy provoked by The First Stone and her understanding of how and why that particular storm erupted and how it appears differently to her now. She also talked about her numerous journals, leading Crabb to extract a promise from her not to burn any more of them. I found the interview thoroughly entertaining — much as I did Garner’s book Everywhere I Look, which just so happens to contain a superb extended essay about the Australian Ballet.

In addition to Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, I have been doing quite a lot of Reading lately. Truly excitingly, I strongly suspect some of the books I have read lately are Great Books (and yes, those capitals are Definitely Required). Last weekend I finished reading Ian McEwan’s lastest, Lessons, which was brilliant but requires further reflection before I write about it. A few weeks ago, however, I finished Shehan Karunatilaka’s outstanding novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which won the 2022 Booker Prize. This book got under my skin, and well and truly into my subconscious. Quite literally, I found myself dreaming things based on the pages I had read before I went to sleep — and, not surprisingly given the novel details the post-mortem exploits of a war photographer, they were not particularly pleasant things.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is both a ghost story and a murder mystery, but is neither in the traditional sense. Set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the novel demands you engage with all sorts of things including politics, religion, gender, class, friendship and family dynamics — the works. Despite concerning the exploits of a dead photographer during his first week an the Afterlife populated by supernatural beings, the book brims with roiling mass of humanity. This is a novel of colour and movement, peppered with dialects and idiomatic speech, bursts of hilarity and moments of adroitly observed insight, like this one:

Evil is not what we should fear. Creatures with power acting in their own interest: that is what should make us shudder.

I highly recommend The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. A word to the wise, however: if you do choose to read it, really go with it. Suspend your disbelief and you’ll be in for quite a ride.

I next read Leigh Bardugo’s book Hell Bent, her sequel to Ninth House. Even though this is a fantasy novel with substantial supernatural elements, reading Hell Bent after The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida felt like returning to a reassuringly familiar world: not only is the geographical setting real, but the temporal setting is also close to present day. Additionally, the main characters are distinctly human…until they’re not. No spoilers here! Though I’m genuinely looking foward to the next instalment of Galaxy Stern’s adventures.

In terms of Eating, I’ve been getting a lot more organised and have resumed menu planning. Not only does this save me time and reduces my mental load, but it also boosts the variety factor when it comes to family meals. The added benefit of posting the week’s menu ahead of time is that other family members can also pitch in and start meal prepping if needs be (not that this has ever happened…I live in hope). Knowing I have increased work commitments coming up next term, I am making an effort to get into good habits now and and am reminding myself of meals I can cook ahead or dinners that are “one pot wonders”. In this vein I’ve also been calling to mind various traybake recipes, and have been figuring out what (other than muffins) I can make as lunchbox treats.

Since we’ve had a long hot March, we’re still enjoying our salad days — especially the salads featured in Hetty McKinnon’s brilliant cookbook Community: Salad Recipes from Arthur Street Kitchen. I don’t think I own a single coobook I have made more meals from than this one, and our most recent discovery from this gem is Pumpkin with Chickpeas, Toasted Coconut and Lemon Tahini (except we ditched the Lemon Tahini dressing in favour or a bit of extra lime juice). It’s a Fijian inspired salad, packed with fabulous flavours and topped with the satisfying crunch of toasted pepitas. It’s also truly delicious.

Admiring is one of my favourite sections of the THREAD, and this month I cannot go past the brilliantly and blackly comic television show Bad Sisters. Set in present day Dublin and featuring five sisters, the first episode features the funeral of John Paul — husband of the second eldest of the Garvey sisters, Grace. It turns out JP, during his life, was quite a piece of work (abusive, controlling, manipulative and generally nasty) so it may come as no surprise that the storyline flip flops between the past — during which all four of Grace’s sisters have some sort of a go at bumping off their evil brother-in-law to rescue their sister and niece — and the present, when a harried and hapless insurance agent is desperately trying to prove JP’s death has been caused by the Garvey sisters’ foul play so he does not have to pay out a life insurance claim. It is not immediately apparent who or what has killed John Paul, but the show is so darkly funny and entertaining that Marvel Girl and I binged the ten episodes over the course of a single weekend.

Back at the beginning of the month I also found myself admiring the glorious scenery that forms the backdrop to Yellowstone. I had been putting off watching Season 6 of this fabulous show, because I didn’t want to watch an episode a week. (I also suspect I was feeling slightly superstitious about watching the most recent season because I watched the other five while I was isolating when I had COVID, and a fresh wave was hitting around the time Season 6 came out). In any case, I adore the scenery in the show — which could probably, given how many people fight over the land in Yellowstone, be counted as a character in itself — particularly as it reminds me of the country near where I spent part of my childhood when our family moved to Canada for a couple of years. So, as it turns out, I watch Yellowstone the nostalgia it evokes for me just as much as the drama — and for Kelly Reilly’s vivid portrayal of badass Beth Dutton. Just as an aside — did you know Kelly Reilly is English? Her accent in the show is pretty tight.

And that brings us, as always, to Doing, though this month one of the main things I have been doing is waiting for and then celebrating the return of another stellar television series: Ted Lasso. Season 3 is landing at last, and not a moment too soon! There are so many things that I (along with the rest of the known world) love about Ted Lasso. The writing is so sharp it sparkles, and the performances — especially now we are three seasons in — are so well-honed they truly shine. Rather than fangirling at length over the cast, because I can’t think of a single one of them I don’t love, let’s just leave it by saying there are so many lines from this show that have found their way into our family’s daily vocabulary — not least of which is simply, “Oi!” — that I can’t imagine life without Ted Lasso. It’s that good.

Other things I have been doing have included making a concerted effort to maintain good hydration and to keep stringing together sessions with my personal trainer. PT sessions are easier to keep up with (you schedule regular sessions, you turn up: “Simples” as the meerkats say). Drinking enough water? You’d think it would be so straightforward, but making and sustaining this habit is taking me longer than I expected. I am incredibly grateful to my girls, who thoughtfully presented me with a large Ravenclaw drinkbottle for my birthday, because I now try to chug my way through this several times a day. I’m getting better with hydration, and I’m deadset sure it will be worth the effort, so…go me?!

Anyway, we’ve reached the end of the THREAD for March 2023. Like a piece of string, I’m never sure how long it’s going to be and this one has been a bit of an epic, (so good on you if you’ve stuck with me and got this far), so my head is definitely less “buzzy” than it was when I started. As always, I’d love to hear what’s buzzing around in your head or what you’ve been THREADing your way through, so leave a comment if you’d like to.

Until next time, mind yourselves!

BJx

Introducing the THREAD

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It’s been a long while since I last posted here. Christmas has come and gone, and New Year’s too.

Since our family finally ventured overseas for the first time in years at the beginning of January 2023, my year in review posts for 2022 never eventuated. And, although I often have a multitude of ideas for posts, I frequently don’t have the time to execute them — mostly because life. So between my last post and this, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to make this blog more relevant to my life as it is now.

When I started making a list of what I wanted to write about — things I’d been thinking, reading, eating and doing — I realised I had the beginnings of a workable acronym for all I wanted to communicate. A couple of minutes of tinkering later, I had a plan in my notebook and a smile on my face.

And so, without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the THREAD.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

I’ve been thinking about this post by Amy Betters-Midvelt, which someone shared to the Chat10LooksTeen Facebook group recently. It’s called All Parents of Teenagers are Liars, and examines the way we speak about — OK, lie about — the lives of those she refers to as “tall kids”, or teenagers. It reminded me of the old saying, which I may have heard myself imparting to my own tall kids of late, that everyone is dealing with something. You might be privy to someone’s situation. Perhaps, to you, it seems trivial, perhaps not. Or maybe you’ll never know what a person is going through, and it’s something truly ghastly. Or maybe it’s not. But the fact remains: everyone is dealing with something.

My two main takeaways from this thought-provoking piece were, firstly, that regardless of how tall they are (and believe me, Marvel Girl has well and truly passed me, and Miss Malaprop’s not far behind her), teenagers are still kids. And secondly, that just about every parent of a teenager I know is more likely to respond as cheerily as they can to a query about how their tall kid is doing rather than launching into a ten minute diatribe about whatever it is they are dealing with at that time, whether it be school refusal, bullying, slipping grades, vaping, porn, alcohol, general slothfulness, or their insistence on publicly wearing a bikini so miniscule it would make a Brazilian blush. We’re all doing our best, with varying degrees of success, and sometimes as unsure of ourselves as parents as our tall kids are of the almost-adults they’re becoming.

Everyone is dealing with something. But focusing on the good bits when we’re asked? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

Since I live in a house with two tall kids, I’ve been hearing a lot of their music lately. Our summer days have been filled with songs from Lana Del Ray, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles. Marvel Girl got a record player for Christmas, so there have been numerous trips to various music stores in search of specific titles on vinyl. (I suspect I did clock up more than a few brownie points for presenting her with the Moonstone Blue edition of Midnights to start off her collection, but that may have been more good luck than good management on my part).

The Bloke and I have made sure Marvel Girl has added a few classics to her record collection too, making sure she’s got some Beatles tunes, and some U2, and even dug out some old vinyl we’d been hanging on to since forever and introduced her to Neil Diamond’s Hot August Nights. We even found some Elvis records that had belonged to her great grandmother, and the theme song to Felix the Cat, just for good measure.

When the kids are not around, I’ve been listening to a weird mix of Indie Folk and whatever happens to be on Spotify’s ever-changing “Front Left” playlist. And when I’m working, it’s all instrumental…no words, because lyrics have a tendency to get in the way of the words I’m writing.

I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading this summer, have have been on a bit of a Jonathan Franzen kick after reading Crossroads just after Christmas. I was happy to hear Crossroads is intended as the first of a trilogy, and I enjoyed it so much I decided to read Freedom. Franzen writes about family so well — the weird, somtimes stilted, inter-generational dynamics of living with people purely by accident of birth — and often in a darkly funny way.

I also plowed my way through several holiday reads via the Libby app (Jane Harper’s Exiles, and two very British mystery novels by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett called A Murder of Crows and A Cast of Falcons). In various airports and armchairs I read Allegra in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel, Hilde Hinton’s new book A Solitary Walk on the Moon, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold and a couple of entertaining thrillers: The Cloisters by Katy Hays and A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris. I also read and found myself frequently reflecting on the tragically beautiful portrait of love and mental illness in Olivie Blake’s novel Alone With You in the Ether. I enjoyed them all, some more than others, but mostly because each was exactly what I needed at the time.

Eating is something I am eternally grateful for. I am one of those people who lives to eat, not one who eats to live, so good food — whether prepared by me or for me — is something I truly relish. We ate some fantastic meals during our road trip around New Zealand, discovering some great restaurants. To this end I highly recommend Atticus Finch in Rotorua, Pacifica in Napier (where our kids enjoyed their first ever degustation dinner), and the Pier Hotel in Kaikoura.

Since we’ve been home and school has resumed, we are back to far more routine offerings, such as Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Banana Muffins (my copy of her book Kitchen automatically falls open at the page featuring this recipe, not least because it is a very effective way of using up over-ripe bananas). Like most of Australia — OK, half the world — we’ve been singing the praises of Nagi Maehashi, of RecipeTin Eats fame, whose cookbook Dinner has been a source of many a home cooked meal at our place this summer. We are particular fans of the Asian Glazed Salmon, not only because it’s insanely delicious, but also because it is super quick to prepare. We tip our collective hats to Nagi, a Northern Beaches local who creates amazing recipes and gives so much back to our local community via RecipeTin Meals.

I know it might seem like a peculiar thing, but one thing I have been admiring lately is the bottom of our new swimming pool. Yep — the bottom! You know how the light hitting the water creates those mesmerising moving patterns? The ones that make you think you might be swimming over the top of a gigantic turquoise-shelled sea turtle (if such a thing existed)? Or some kind of weirdly warped honeycomb-like tessellation? OK…maybe it’s just me. But I do love watching it, floating on the surface, gazing down into the blue.

I am also admiring my kids, who both started at a new school this year. It’s not been entirely plain sailing, but they’re both doing all those hard things that stand you in good stead later in life, as well as in the here and now: making new friends, finding their way in unfamiliar territory, remembering (after a long summer) how to be punctual, showing up to things they’ve signed up for, speaking up for themselves when they need to. I’m struck by their courage, their tenacity, their humour. It was truly gratifying to see their care for each other after their first day, checking in and making sure their sister had survived their first day before regaling me with tales of what they’d experienced. And I’m grateful — beyond measure — that after four years at separate schools, they are finally together again.

And finally, we find ourselves at doing! We’ve been doing so much, but the standout highlight would have to be our New Zealand road trip. We flew into Auckland, and drove — via Hobbiton, of course — to Rotorua in all its (stinky) geothermal glory, then onto Napier before heading down to see very dear friends who have made their home in Wellington, at the tip of the North Island. A particularly exciting moment for Marvel Girl was watching her godfather flying a plane out of his “office”, Wellington airport: she had requested he do a barrel roll but apparently such aerobatics are frowned upon on domestic flights, so we settled for seeing him take off instead. We might even have cheered.

From Wellington we made our way across to the South Island via the Interislander Ferry to Kaikoura, saw hundreds of seals including about fifty pups at O’hau, then made our way via Christchurch to Aoraki (Mt Cook). There we were blown away by mountain views, icebergs and glaciers, and even swam in the very cold but still refreshing Lake Pukaki. We finally wended our way to Queenstown, made a magical day trip to Milford Sound and saw a bunch of bottlenosed dolphins put on quite a show, before finishing up with a hair-raising jetboat ride on the Shotover River. We flew home tired but happy, pleased with all we’d been able to do and see but also glad to be back in our new house.

So there you have it, folks: the inaugural edition of the THREAD, which I hope you’ve enjoyed.

I’d love to know what you’ve been getting up to over the summer and how life is treating you now school is back in session for another year. I’d also appreciate any thoughts you have on tall kids and how to manage being a parent (I’ve just about given up trying to “manage” the tall kids at this point, but I think that’s also kind of the point at this stage in their development?!), or anything else that has got your brain turning over lately. And feel free, as always, to use the comments for recommendations for any music, books or recipes you’re into as well.

Mind yourselves,

BJx

And They’re Off!

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No, this is not a post about a race.

Or strip poker.

Or a bucket of prawns in the sun.

It’s about Marvel Girl’s braces — which came off last week. (Please feel free to do a happy dance at this juncture, even though they’re not your braces.)

Except it’s not exactly about Marvel Girl getting her braces off, but about the fact that even though it has been more than seven and a half years since I wrote this post about her losing her very first tooth, my sense of saudade remains.

Back then, when she was ever so much smaller (and definitely not taller than me, which she is now), I expressed it like this:

I feel saudade most acutely in those moments when part of me recognises, at some deep and otherwise undetected level, that after this, things will never be the same. These are the occasions when I feel that I am bearing witness to life — most frequently, for me, to the lives of my daughters. These are the moments that are captured by my heart’s camera, imprinted between heartbeats, indelible impressions of life most raw and pure.

That same feeling hit me all over again when Marvel Girl’s braces were removed, except this time I was also ready with my phone camera, to photograph the first glimpse of her beautiful new smile — a smile that reached all the way to her eyes and truly made them twinkle.

The smile that had never been seen before, hidden as it had been behind carefully positioned chunks and bands of metal for so long.

The smile that had not been gained without more than a year’s worth of careful teeth cleaning, diligent application of tiny rubber bands multiple times a day, and — let’s be honest — a decent amount of pain.

The smile that somehow made my Marvel Girl look three years older than she did when she sat down in the orthodontist’s chair less than an hour earlier.

The smile that made me think of the wise words of the American poet, Mary Oliver, who was so good at capturing in scant, succinct lines the sentiments that came rushing through my brain and body that afternoon.

Of how ridiculously precious — and short — life is.

Of how clinging to the past is pointless, and possibly perverse.

Of how pining for the future always denies us the present.

Of how important it is to pay attention to the here and now, since it is all we truly have.

Of saudade, all over again.

Living the Dream and Donna Summer

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I’m typing this in my new kitchen.

It’s light and bright and the ceiling is double height. It looks new. It still smells new.

More — no most — importantly, it feels like HOME.

The Bloke and I dreamed of building a house for a decade before we had the knowledge, funds and chutzpah to pull it off. Physically occupying the place we have been imagining for so long is gratifying. It also feels strangely familiar – we designed this home, right down to the last detail, and it has been a pleasure (and a relief) to see the final form take shape exactly as I had pictured it would.

We’re beyond happy with the result. And we’re all happy to be here.

Even the cat.

But the best thing is, it’s home.

Did I mention that already?!

The past few weeks have not been without their challenges, but they have also been filled with good things. Like curling up on our new couch with Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop, watching Zan Rowe’s Take Five. The Tony Armstrong episode rocked (as does Tony Armstrong), and it reminded me just how great Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love is.

Incredibly, Summer recorded the vocal in a single take, ushering in a new age of disco and electronic music. It still sounds amazing, with its driving rhythms and floating melody. The legendary David Bowie told the story of how Brian Eno heard I Feel Love for the first time while they were recording in Berlin, and come running in to say he had heard “the sound of the future”.

If you haven’t already clicked on that link and started listening to it, do it now!

This house sounds and feels like my future.

I’m content, even though there are still a few boxes lying around (mostly of books, because my library shelves have not yet arrived).

We dared to dream and now we’re living the dream.

And, as I might have mentioned, it feels like home.

An Oasis in Time

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It’s been ages, folks…I’ve been keeping a lot of balls in the air (which does make me happy), but it’s nice to find a moment or two on yet another rainy day in Sydneytown to tend my tiny patch of cyberspace.

Our house build is ever-so-nearly complete, and it has been truly gratifying to see my castle in the air take shape in solid form, particularly since my mental image and the finished product match.

Now, with the finish line in sight, my mind has turned to packing things up and turfing things out, to sorting out insurance and utilities, and to booking removalists and deliveries and cleaners and all manner of other bits and pieces.

It’s a lot, but it’s all good.

I’m at a point in my life where I am far better at making conscious choices about how I spend my time, and I was grateful today to find a few moments to read a novel at the hairdresser (instead of drafting interview questions for my next article), and to tap away for a few brief moments here (instead of packing yet another box).

It’s these small oases in time that allow me to fill my cup, and enable me to keep all the balls in the air.

I’m learning to pay attention to the little prompts from the universe which, by coincidence — if you still believe in such things — presented me with a picture of a beautiful wadi in Oman when I switched my laptop on today.

I understood the message.

Find time, find space.

What did the universe tell you today?

Mind yourselves,

BJx

Write Like You’re Running Out of Time

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I’ve not been posting much here lately.

It feels like my patch of cyberspace is looking a little desolate: far more like a wonky pavement with weeds spilling from between the cracks than a verdant, carefully tended garden. That said, there is a good reason why I have neglected this space, despite my various attempts to nurture it over the years, and that is I’m trying to finish the first draft of my novel.

Writing is one of my great true loves. I love the feeling of sentences pouring forth from my fingers, pooling themselves paragraphs and flowing into pages of prose. I savour the feeling of selecting precisely the right words and placing them in a specific order to bring a particular scenario, emotion, or plot point to life.

But it takes time.

It takes time to enter the headspace of the character whose perspective you’re writing from, to inhabit their skin and to bring their inner life and backstory to the forefront of your own mind so you can produce a believeable, genuine response to what is happening in the story at any given time. And to achieve that, you need to possess a clear understanding of exactly where the tale you’re telling has come from and where it will end up — because you’ve had to create all that too, not to mention the world in which it takes place.

And sometimes you need time just to sit with an idea.

For the past two days I have been allowing a scene to germinate in my head. I’ve got some writing done, sure, but writing is not always about how many words you’ve got on a page. I’ve needed time to flesh out a new character in my mind, to understand where they fit into the action and how they relate to the other characters who already populate my world. I have needed time to figure out what they look like, how they move, and what makes them unique. And then I have needed time to turn my attention to the first impressions the character whose point of view I am currently writing from might have of them, and what knowledge these characters possess about themselves, each other and the wider plot of the novel as a whole. Only then could I map out how these characters might interact, and to decide what information I needed to hide or reveal to build suspense and drive the story towards its climax.

And that’s just for one small scene at the end of Chapter Thirteen!

Writing is hard, sometimes, no matter how much you love it.

It’s hard to find uninterrupted time to let the story unfurl in your head in the way I have just described.

It’s hard to admit you’re writing a novel in the first place.

It’s hard to answer questions about when your book will be finished, or where you’re up to, or whether it will ever be published.

It’s hard to silence the ever-present and insistent voice of my inner critic, who frequently tells me I am a fool for attempting to write a novel, or I’m arrogant to assume anyone would want to read it, or I’m any number of other negative things. (Then again, I’m yet to meet a writer whose inner critic does not persist in making a multitude of unhelpful comments and suggestions, usually at the most inopportune times).

It’s hard to keep believing in yourself and your story, knowing it might never make it onto the printed page.

But since I have started creating my characters and the world in which they live, I feel a strange sense of duty to make sure I see them through to the end — even if it means my patch of cyberspace suffers from benign neglect in the meantime.

As Glennon Doyle says, we can do hard things.

So I wish you well with whatever hard things you’re doing.

I’m off to write that scene.

Mind yourselves,

BJx

The Thrifty Fictionista Feels Nostalgic…

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“Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of Penobscot Bay, you can watch the time of the world go by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day . . .”

These are the opening lines of the Thrifty Fictionista’s favourite picture book, one I have loved since I was a child: Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder. Telling the story of a girl and her younger sister spending their summer holidays on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, it follows them as they explore the natural world around them. They swim, they sail, they laze in the sun — they even survive a hurricane that blows in one night.

I still love everything about that book: the beauty of the painted illustrations, the cadence of the sentences, every last carefully chosen word. I often wished, when I was little, that I could go on holidays just like the girls in the book, even though I lived on the other side of the world from Maine.

Like the girls in the book, I spent a lot of time on boats when I was a kid. My grandfather, who had served in the navy, was never one to be without some kind of seafaring craft, so my brother and I enjoyed time on a succession of yachts, one of which had sailed the Sydney to Hobart race multiple times, and later on an old Halvorsen cruiser. The sights, sounds and smells of moorings and marinas still make me happy.

What reminded me of Time of Wonder most recently, however, was something equally nostalgic, but completely unexpected. I was watching M*A*S*H with my kids (having got them hooked on that golden oldie after they had watched so many episodes of Brooklyn 99 I thought I was going to scream), and we came to the part of Series 5 when Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan gets engaged to Lt Colonel Donald Penobscott — and at the first mention of his name, there I was: right back in the middle of Penobscot Bay, exploring the Time of Wonder island and all its natural wonders.

At the moment, all I would like to do is dive between the pages of my old, battered copy of Time of Wonder and relive it all once again. Or even the shiny new copy I got for my own kids when they were old enough to read it.

But, since we’re in the process of building our house, that dear old book is somewhere in storage, along with many other treasured possessions of the paged variety. It has been hard not having my book “friends” around for the past nine or ten months, but now that build is drawing to close up stage I am itching to get my fingers on volumes I have wished for while living here in our tiny rental.

The Thrifty Fictionista could not do with out ALL her books, however — so old favourites and new have found their way up the 49 steps to our front door. Anna Karenina is here, rubbing shoulders with Lolita and Dorian Gray, and even The Once and Future King. There are books by authors whose writing I can’t live without: Helen Garner, Trent Dalton, Ed Ayres, Ursula Le Guin, Virginia Woolf, Hilary Mantel, Anne Lamott. And there are cookbooks, of course, too, thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigella Lawson, Poh Ling Yeow and Annabel Crabb.

Before too long, however, it will be time for us to pack these few books that did wend their way up all those stairs into boxes and take them to our new house. In Time of Wonder the girl is a little bit sad about the place she’s leaving, a little bit glad about the place she’s going to. The Thrifty Fictionista, on the other hand, is a little bit impatient to get out of the place I’m leaving, and tremendously excited about the place I’m going to — not least because it will have a library.

There will be space for books, space to watch endless re-runs of M*A*S*H, space to cook and space to dream, and even space to wonder where hummingbirds go in a hurricane.

And I can’t wait.

The Art of Hoping

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Nearly three hundred years ago, a young French nobleman by the name of Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues was encouraged by his friend Voltaire to publish an assortment of essays and other writings, appended to which was a collection aphorisms called Reflections and Maxims (1746).

Among these sayings was one I stumbled across the other day:

La patience est l’art d’espérer.

This short phrase translates, very simply, as “Patience is the art of hoping”.

Finding this shiny little gem of a sentence was helpful to me, particularly as I am currently working on two long term projects: building a house and writing a novel. Both of these ventures require abundant quantities of patience, not least because La Niña has been persistently wreaking havoc with the weather and head colds have been stubbornly interfering with my children’s health and school attendance.

For much of my life, patience has been a virtue that has often eluded me. I have written before about being stalked by the Grey Cat of Restlessness, which I freely admit is much easier to live with than Churchill’s Black Dog, but which also presents challenges of its own — especially when longer tasks are involved.

It’s not that I’m not prepared to do the work or put in the hard yards. Watching our new home slowly emerging beneath the scaffolding is exciting, and writing makes my soul sing even on the dreariest day.

But, like Inigo Montoya, I hate waiting.

I think that is why I appreciate de Clapier’s aphorism (number 251 of 700, no less) putting such a positive spin on patience. By highlighting the role of hope in being patient, it becomes far more aspirational rather than temporal.

I like hope!

As Emily Dickinson said: Hope is the thing with feathers. It allows us to take flight.

I like steadfastness, too. It allows us to persist.

In fact, I’m a fan of a whole raft of great qualities that can help you when things — especially creative endeavours like building houses and writing novels — feel like they’re taking forever.

Because even when things feel interminable, it is worth remembering that life is short, and ageing is a privilege.

Just ask Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, who died at the tender age of 31 the year after he published his collection of essays and other writings. Because he did it…he finished the book, and published it, even if he did so anonymously and he didn’t become famous for it until a century after his death.

The art of hoping allows us to persist, even when our patience cups feel depleted, or leaky, or empty.

Maybe especially then.

Because we never, ever know what is just around corner.

The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes been the cause of remarkable success.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Mind yourselves,

BJx

The Thrifty Fictionista Is Cranky

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Readers, the Thrifty Fictionista is cranky.

Seriously cranky.

Not with herself, nor with anyone else currently living, but with Thomas Hardy — who died almost 100 years ago.

Why? I hear you ask.

The answer is simple: I have just finished reading Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and the whole book made me fed up and furious.

I never even planned to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but it turned up in one of those brilliant bargain boxes of books the Thrifty Ficionista falls prey to every now and then, this time a Young Adult collection purchased for my elder daughter. I nabbed Tess before she got hold of it, thinking it would be an entertaining read — which, for the most part, it was — but I was not prepared for how angry the novel would make me.

Especially the ending.

Without spoiling the story (or its ending) for anyone who has not yet read it, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a novel exposing the sexual hypocrisy, entrenched misogyny, and overbearing patriarchy of the period in which it was written. Even though the book was first published in 1891, many of the themes and abhorrent behaviours depicted in it remain all too relevant today — and this realisation was a substantial contributor to the Thrifty Fictionista’s current crankiness.

I’m now faced with a dilemma: do I give the book back to my (early teenaged) daughter to read or not? Would she find some of the characters’ conduct as offensive as I did? Would she dismiss the behaviour I found so repellent as simply being fusty and of its time, or would she also recognise it — repackaged and more than likely digitised and/or broadcast — in her own experiences of the current century?

I can only imagine, given she has been raised by me, that my daughter would respond to Tess of the D’Urbervilles in a similar fashion to the Thrifty Fictionista. But does she really need to read a fictional account of how lousy things were for women back in the day? Or am I better off giving her books like Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own or Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, which may give her the headspace and the tools to forge her own way as a woman in the world?

You see, getting cranky is a good thing.

It might make the Thrifty Fictionista uncomfortable, but it also makes her think.

Hard.

About what’s important. About what influences — fictional, historical or otherwise — I want my daughters to be exposed to. Even about the possible effects of reading the works of a novelist whose female characters generally appear to be subject to fates they can neither change nor challenge.

Honestly, I want my kids to get cranky if they read books like Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

But — more significantly — I want them to focus on becoming the incredible human beings, and not being circumscribed by history or sex or gender or labels of any kind.

Most importantly, I want my daughters to understand life as Glennon Doyle describes it:

I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. If I am living bravely, my entire life will become a million deaths and rebirths. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself.

So: thank you, Thomas Hardy.

The Thrifty Fictionista read your book and is cranky.

But she’s also a whole lot clearer on what she wants for herself and for her children.

Rescued

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Three years ago today, a small furry bundle of joy made her way into our hearts and lives. She was underweight, a bit skittish, and had been looking for a place to call home for some time.

From the moment we adopted her, Tauriel — our truly magnificent feline — has been an important part of our family.

I remember the day we got her well, and particularly recall her following cautiously at my heels as I showed her around the house she would call home. She was alert, interested, and seemed to trust me from the start.

Needless to say, I was smitten from the moment I saw her.

Even now that we have moved house, I still find it inordinately comforting to know that she will be there when I get home. Her previous life as a stray has resulted in her being a strictly indoor cat, but she is an adaptable sort, and I appreciate her presence in the house when no one else is here. It is lovely to find her waiting for me at the front door when I get home, or — now that the weather is getting colder — curled up on top of my doona.

She is never far from my side or my thoughts, and is a gracious and graceful companion.

I am grateful beyond measure for the morning three years ago when The Bloke, knowing exactly why I was awake so early, rolled over and uttered a single sentence that filled my heart.

“We can get her, if you want”.

I’m so glad we did.

Thanks for being the best cat ever, Tauriel.